North Carolina Republicans Try To Ensure They'll Be In Charge Of Future Elections

Republicans in North Carolina are attempting to push through a bill that would ensure their control over voting procedure in election years.

State Rep. David Lewis (R), who chairs the elections committee, filed the bill in the North Carolina House of Representatives on Monday amid allegations of Republican-led ballot theft during the 2018 midterm elections.

The bill would require election boards in every county in the state to be chaired by a member of the political party with the highest number of registered voters in odd-numbered years. During even-numbered years, the boards would be chaired by a member of the party with the second-highest number of registered voters.

North Carolina has more registered Democrats than Republicans, which would mean a Republican member of every election board in the state would be in charge of voting procedure during election years. That would hold true as long as Republicans continue to have the second-highest number of registered voters in the state, which is likely to remain true as long as U.S. population trends persist.

The NC GOP is trying to rush through a law that would REQUIRE every county elections board in NC to be chaired by a Republican in election years. These guys just can't stop trying to rig elections.

Lewis told HuffPost that the bill was intended to be a “place holder” while the committee worked on negotiations with the governor.

“To be clear, this is a holdover provision from an enjoined statute and this legislation was filed as a place holder bill in order to jump start negotiations with the Governor over the structure of our system of elections and ethics enforcement,” Lewis said.

Meanwhile, allegations recently surfaced that a political operative working for Republicans ran an illegal ballot operation in North Carolina’s 9th Congressional District ― where Republican Mark Harris appeared to defeat Democrat Dan McCready by fewer than 1,000 votes in the midterms.